Last Year I joined a number of the Canadian MVPs for a day of NDA, skill improvement and general interactions. For most of the sessions, the key word was caNaDA, so the only thing I can say about those sessions is the Microsoft has some interesting announcements coming up in the near future. Of course,Continue reading “Stand up and be counted.”
Category Archives: Visual Studio
Universal Apps – Settings on stun
Settings are one of those things that are not the same between Windows and the phone. In Windows, there are charms and developer can add their code to Charms like Settings, on the phone, the developer has to handle it on a page they create that they call by adding a button to the screen,Continue reading “Universal Apps – Settings on stun”
Universal Apps – Sort of?
In WP8, I can set up a view and use a few SortDescriptions and I have view several my data in a sorted format. Not so with a universal app. The answer I received from the forums is that: Universal apps are based on WinRT, not Silverlight. As you can see in the relevant APIs: Windows.UI.XAML.Data.CollectionViewSourceContinue reading “Universal Apps – Sort of?”
Universal Apps – TextBox
Though not specifically for Universal Apps, the TextBox control has been nicely enhanced. In the past, if we wanted a header, we had to add a TextBlock before the TextBox. This meant coordination was required every time the TextBox had to be repositioned. Now the TextBox control includes a Header parameter. If you are notContinue reading “Universal Apps – TextBox”
Universal Apps – Starting from Windows Phone 7
So, in other posts I have mentioned what is new as far as Multilingual support and Navigation is concerned. Now it is time to point out other differences. For those lovers of Blend, it is now gone. Okay, it is still there, but it has lost its’ place on the Project menu. Now you have toContinue reading “Universal Apps – Starting from Windows Phone 7”
Universal Apps – Navigation
Unlike the navigation on Windows Phone 7, the navigation is a bit more complex in a Universal App, but luckily, Microsoft has provided some helpers. To add the helpers, you need to create the page with a Basic rather than a Blank page. You will be told that you are missing components and do you want toContinue reading “Universal Apps – Navigation”
Universal Apps – One App to Rule Them All?
Microsoft is helping developers by merging the two main platforms (Windows & Phone), but unfortunately, if you do a search on Universal App you will get a lot of information about another company trying to combine their platforms. In the second update to Visual Studio 2013, they added supported for Windows Phone 8.1 and Universal Apps. SoContinue reading “Universal Apps – One App to Rule Them All?”
Multilingual Toolkit does not work?
After looking at my download stats last week, I decided to upgrade all my WP7 apps to WP8 and continue developing from the there. The stats should that it was no longer worth the effort of maintaining a WP7 version of the code. The existing programs would remain in the marketplace, but not be updated.Continue reading “Multilingual Toolkit does not work?”
Visual Studio and the Multilingual Toolkit
This August while taking a river cruise through Europe I created a multilingual phrase book. It worked great, but the way the multilingual toolkit worked with Visual Studio was a pain. Once you added words and phrases to the default language AppResource file, you had to launch the multilingual toolkit translation app to do the translation. ThoughContinue reading “Visual Studio and the Multilingual Toolkit”
Formatting Debug Writeline
For the past few months, I have been working on a Windows Phone app that uses several tables. Most of the time when I debug, I rely heavily on Debug.Writeline to help me keep track of what is going on as I test an app. If the app crashes, I can look at Output andContinue reading “Formatting Debug Writeline”
john Visio MVP 